


Ten Years

by Margo_Kim



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Rape/Non-con, Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Coming of Age, Dark, Gen, References to Suicide, precanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 08:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ask Bela what she would do to stay alive. Ask her at any point in her life. The answer will always be the same: Anything. And she won't lose any sleep over it either. Bela's life from before the deal and what comes next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Years

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt I got over tumblr: "I'm going down to the devil's water. I'm going to drown in that troubled water." ("Devil's Water," Rennie Foster) and written over one long evening. ("It was supposed to be a drabble," I whisper at my computer around hour four. "They are always supposed to be drabbles.") My original intention was to make the story of Bela less tragic--this story did not go in that direction. Not in the slightest. In fact, it went so far in the other direction that I now feel I owe her another story that's just her gleefully robbing people and not giving one shit. Sorry, Bela.

She is twelve years old the first time she thinks about killing herself. The first time she plans it, if you want to be more exact. Abby has thought about suicide since she first learned the concept, first glimpsed the word in a headline of her father's newspaper. She was six then, and she thought about it every day as a way to pass the time. As idle curiosity, the way that dark things become lovely to children. Now it becomes a plan.

She steals a knife from the kitchen and shoves it under her mattress. She swears she can feel it as she sleeps—the princess and the pea retold. Abby has always liked that fairy tale. She knows what it is like to lie in a bed that hides a secret. She knew what that was like before she hid the knife. When she’s tucked in, she can reach down and touch the handle just barely poking out. Sometimes she falls asleep with her hand wrapped around it.

This is her plan as she first conceives it, in that desperate lonely night when she first stole the knife: She will wait until her father comes to her. He will close the door and sit on the bed. He will tell her to be quiet and to be a good girl. She will be quiet. She will be a good girl. She will make no fuss while it is happening so her father can pretend that she wants this, so her mother can pretend that this isn't happening. He will kiss her cheek after he finishes. She will let him. When he leaves her room to return to his marriage bed, she will not go to the bath as she normally does. She will not scour herself clean. She will leave herself just the way he left her. She will call the police. She will tell them to come. She will stab herself in the heart and leave them to find her.

The only flaw is that she won't get to see her parents try and explain their way out.

The only flaw is that she has no way of knowing if they will be punished.

The only flaw is that she has to die.

Therein, as the bard would say, lies the rub. Because Abby knows from the moment she tucks that knife under her bed that she doesn't want to die. She has no intention of dying. That seems like a greater tragedy than anything else that is happening. Abby endures. She does not know how to do anything else. Suicide is a sweet dream that rocks her to sleep. It is fairies and Santa Clause and God. Just another lie that she believes when she needs it. She can hardly structure her life around it.

"Abby, darling, have you seen my good steak knife?" her mother asks. "I can't imagine where it has gone."

Abby never returns the knife. It is the first thing that she steals.

***

She is fourteen when Molly Preston becomes beautiful. It happens overnight. Tuesday afternoon, Molly left school in tears after Victoria Newton called her a toad in front of the whole class. Abby had laughed along with everyone else. It had been funny. Molly had looked like a toad, and one perpetually displeased with the fly in its mouth. Wednesday morning, however, no one laughs.

Molly is beautiful in such a plausible way. You could say she just scraped the grease out of her hair. You could say she just popped each and every pimple. You could say she learned what makeup was. You could say all those things, and it would seem true, it would seem like it would explain the miracle that was walking the halls of their school. But Abby has spent too much time learning how to make herself beautiful to believe that you can do it overnight. She has learned how to dab her war paint, to wrap herself in charm, to put her best forward and only her best, and Molly has not. Molly is surprised by her beauty. Molly is caught off guard when she sees herself in the mirror. Beautiful people know that they are beautiful. They only look into mirrors to confirm and maintain it. Molly Preston is not beautiful. Molly Preston is a cheater.

Abby's not found of cheaters. Not when they aren't her.

And then two days after Molly changes, her best friend Jackie, who could barely hold a biro straight before, starts painting works of staggering skill. And a day after that, Matthew Duncan scores thirteen goals in his soccer game. And a day after that Arthur Dunn's family wins the lotto.

The average, the ordinary, the unremarkable becoming extraordinary. The priest can talk about water turning to wine or raising the dead all he wants. Abby knows a real miracle when she sees it.

Abby spends three days trying to get Molly alone to talk. New Molly has no shortage of friends. In the end, Abby waits in the bushes outside Molly's house and ambushes her as she comes in. "How did you do it?" Abby asks after Molly shrieks.

Molly glares at her. "How did I do what?"

Abby gestures at all of Molly. "This. That didn't happen naturally. You were toad girl last week and now you're Miss Model. What did you do?"

Molly flushes red. It makes her look even more beautiful. "I hate you. Get out of my way."

Abby grabs Molly's arm. "Tell me," Abby hisses.

"Go to hell." Molly tries to yank her arm free, but she's beautiful, not strong. "Why should I help you?"

Abby's fist tightens until Molly gasps with pain. "Because I need a miracle." Her voice breaks. Molly looks at her with horror, with fear, with—oh God—pity. "Please," Abby says, her pride thick in her throat. "Tell me."

Abby hates pity, hates it more than the reason people would think she deserves it, but pity is a weapon that Abby can use. Pity dulls hate. Pity makes people stupid and kind. "Let go of my arm," Molly says. Abby lets go. Molly rubs her reddened skin. It'll bruise, and no doubt everyone will coo and fuss over her poor, perfect, molested skin. "You're a bitch, Abby."

Abby says nothing. She certainly doesn't deny it. The word fits comfortably around her.

"Talk to Melissa Brooks."

Abby furrows her brow. "Her?"

Molly yanks open her door and shrugs. "Just talk to her."

"And that's what you did?"

"No," Molly says, leaning against her doorway. She looks so graceful and lithe that Abby's breath hitches. "I did more. But now she won't leave. So all you have to do is talk to Melissa." She looks at Abby with her bright blue eyes the color of summer. "I hope she gives you what you want." Abby knows Molly doesn't mean it as a blessing.

Melissa Brooks is a quiet girl that no one notices because why should they? There is nothing remarkable about her in the slightest. Neither ugly nor pretty, neither smart nor dull, neither belle of the ball or social pariah, she is the color of beige and the taste of water. Abby has been in class with her for six years now and she cannot say that she has exchange more than ten words with her. And now Melissa sits alone on the school swing as Abby walks away from Molly's home.

It seems like destiny. She's not wrong.

"Hello," Abby says as she sits on the swing next to Melissa. Melissa looks up at her and gives her a smile that Abby's never seen on Melissa's face before.

"Hello," she says. "I heard you were looking for me."

Abby's hands tighten on the swing's chains. "How? _I_ just heard that I was looking for you."

Melissa shrugs. "I listen. You'd be amazed what you can learn about people if you listen."

"Are you doing it then?" Abby asks. "Are you helping people?"

Melissa laughs. It raises the hairs on Abby's neck. There's genuine mirth in that laugh, but there is something else too, and Abby doesn't like the way it sounds. "I give them what they want." She cocks her head as she studies Abby, her eyes glinting in the pale winter light. "Is there something you want?"

Abby's eyes fall to her lap. She cannot open her mouth. Abby isn't here. She's in her room and her bedroom door is swinging shut and Abby buries her face in her pillow until it's done, done, and she will be silent the entire time because if no one says it, then it isn't happening and it never happened and it will never happen again.

The cold metal of the swing bits into her hands. The pain yanks her out of the bedroom. When she unclenches her hands, it feels like the skin has been ripped off of her palms. She glances at Melissa's face. Melissa is smiling. "Ah. I see," she says. "I know what you want." She leans in closer like she is telling a secret. "I don't just give things, you know. I can take them away too."

Abby swings. Something’s burning in her chest. Maybe it’s hope.

“I can take care of them for you,” Melissa says. “And it won’t even cost you anything. For ten whole years.”

And her eyes were red, red as hellfire.

But ten years is a long, long time. And Abby is a clever, clever girl. A lot can happen in ten years.

“You need to say it,” Melissa says. “I can’t do anything unless you say it aloud.”

Can she do this? Is she capable of this?

Yes. That’s one thing Abby has learned. The people in her family are capable of anything.

“I want them gone,” Abby says, and each word feels like the thrust of a knife.

Melissa smiles. “Then come here.”

Her lips are soft beneath Abby’s and they taste like sulfur and ash. Despite everything, it is Abby’s first kiss.

***

She is fifteen when she feels the noose start to tighten. The first year after her parents' death, she just felt free. There was guilt, of course there was guilt, guilt is the tragedy of the human condition, but just because you feel guilty about what you did, it doesn't mean you were wrong to do it. So she felt guilt. She also felt free.

But then she turns fifteen, and then the anniversary of her parents' death passes, and Abby thinks, nine more years. Nine seems a lot smaller than ten. And she swears she can feel something curling around her neck, like rope, like hands, like jaws.

She has nine years left, and she feels each year choking her.

Abby runs away from home, if you can really call what she does running away from home. After all, she may be a plucky orphan going out to face the world, but she's doing it with a multimillion dollar fortune. A far cry from a bandana on a stick.

She has nine years left. She will not spend it in school.

Covering her tracks gets easier. Abby is a clever girl, with a mind built for deception. And she learned early in life that if you toss enough money around, no one questions you. She buys three fake IDs from a shifty man who overcharges her, but they're good enough to get her on a plane out of England. Abby Sinclair stays behind. She doesn’t need that name, and she doesn’t want it.

She arrives in New York. She likes New York. It's loud and rude and full of money. She blends in well. Depending on how she applies her makeup, she can pass from anywhere from twelve to twenty. She buys a flat while dressed in her mother's old clothing. “Name?” the landlord asks.

She shows him her ID. This one she made herself. She’s a quick study. “Bela Coulton.”

He nods at her. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Coulton.”

Isn’t it just.

***

She is sixteen when she finds her first spell book. As a hobby, and having no reason to save her fortune, Bela had taken to collecting. Bibles, crosses, the occasional shroud, the interesting bit of testament related memorabilia that passes her way—she had quickly amassed a collection that’d make the average theologian weak at the knees. It’s amazing what you can get when you’re willing to throw around as much money as it takes to get it.

And then, one sunny Tuesday at an auction with a six-figure entrance fee and a number of national treasures thought long destroyed or lost, a black book with the title _On the Mastery of Demons and Other Allies of Hell_ comes up for bidding, and really, with a title like that, how can Bela say no? She says yes, yes, yes, until no competition remains and takes her prize home with a sense of vague satisfaction. She doesn’t expect the book to be of any _use_. She’s never run across a book on demons that was, usually being nothing more than lurid fixations on demonic sexual prowess and the women turned witches and whores for them. But Bela’s always had a taste for interesting, pointless things, and this fits that description fairly well. A fun impulse buy. Nothing to get excited about.

She reads it cover to cover that night, and when the morning comes, she flips to the beginning and reads it again. This book is true. There are tears on her face because this book is _true._ The red-eyed demon and the baying of hellhounds and the dry kiss pressed against her dry lips as a promise. All of it branded in her brain, all of it written in these pages.

Two years since she struck her deal, and this is the first time she hasn’t felt alone. Or mad. Or mad and alone.

And if the information on demons is correct, then what does that say about the rest of it?

Talking with the dead. Finding missing objects. Hex bags and salt circles and fairy rings. Wands, charms, amulets, ankhs, demon knives and angel blades. And that’s the first three chapters. The midmorning sun slices through her window, and she blinks at the light, at the motes of dust dancing in the light, and wonders, _What strange creatures are those? And how do I kill them?_

There is more in heaven and earth, et cetera, et cetera. Bela’d thought her philosophy had dreamed large enough. The arrogance, the arrogance. The world is bigger and darker and richer than she ever imagined, and she had imagined quite a world. Had she really thought that demons and hell were the only strange things in the shadows? She had been so young and naïve. It’s morning now, and she’s old.

She tightens her hands on the old, old book.

It’s time for a new sort of collection.

***

She is eighteen when the bills are due. She hires an accountant to sort out that rubbish. His first piece of advice is that she shouldn’t have done that. “Right now, Ms. Coulton,” he tells her as he spreads the bad news on the sheets in front of her, “you really can’t afford me.”

Her inheritance is not as endless as it seemed at first glance. In fact, she’s found herself quite at the end of it. _Damn_ , Bela thinks numbly as the man drones on and one. _Perhaps I should have haggled more_.

“Do you have any income coming in at the moment?” he asks.

Bela glances up towards the ceiling. Stained. She wonders how that happened.

“Ms. Coulton?”

“No,” she says.

She will be dead in seven years, and she’ll have to spend the time before that _working_. It’s so unfair she can hardly keep herself from shrieking.

“Then we’ll need to talk about alternative sources of revenue.”

“Indeed,” Bela says without hearing. She could lose the debt, of course. She’d have to lose Bela Coulton along the way. That’s a tragedy. She’d liked Bela Coulton. Perhaps she’d have to lose the entire city as well, pick up her collection, tuck tail, and run. Take shelter on the other coast, in the grand middle, in another country all together. They know her here, the people who matter. It wouldn’t be safe to stay.

She laughs at that under her breath. They know her here. What a joke. Nobody knows her.

“Let’s talk about your assets,” he says.

Over the last year or so, she’s compiled her own modest collection of the occult. It pales in comparison to the long-term collectors, rich old men with the flaming sword of the Eastern Gate and the spear that struck Christ’s side. Bela’s not in those ranks yet. She buys her prizes from flannel-clad yokels who make their living being stupid than she’d ever be. Hunters, they call themselves. Death seeking idiots, she calls them, but they’re the ones who took her sales overtures seriously, and you would not believe what they store in the back of those old pickups. They always need money. She’s always eager to spend. (That is, in retrospect, the problem here.) But look her in the eye and tell her that it wasn’t worth it. She’s got a sword that can kill a ghost with one swipe. She’s got a murderer’s tongue that makes every word the speaker utters sound like the gospel truth. She’s got a key that opens any door and a necklace that makes you beautiful to any eye and—

And she’s got a way out of debt.

“Ms. Coulton? We’re not done here.”

“Yes, we are,” she says, buttoning her coat and smiling to herself. “You have my father’s address. Kindly pass the bill onto him, along with my sincerest apologies regarding my expenditures. I hate that my daddy will think I’m economically irresponsible.”

“I think you underestimate the seriousness—”

The door swings shut behind her. On the way out of the office, Bela chucks her ID in the trash. She begins plans to transfer the Coulton properties to a new name, one with a little less paperwork attached. She begins plans for a few other identities as well. One should never sully one’s own name with wicked deeds. That’s what the spares are for.

It’s a stupid plan, Bela knows that, and a poorly thought-out one at the moment. But she enjoys procurement so much. And she’s not really the kind of collector that values the collection. She’s here for the collecting, and if Bela went bankrupt buying these items, how much will more desperate people pay? And if plaid-wearing yokels can get mystical objects so powerful that owning them seems akin to having an atomic bomb in your pocket, how hard could it be for her to obtain a few items on her own?

Two days later, she pays a visit to an old rich woman Bela met at one of those parties that Bela wasn’t invited to but attended anyway. Mrs. Worthington is happy to have a visitor. Her husband just recently passed, you see, and it’s been ever so lonely without him.

Bela puts down her cup of tea and leans forward like she’s telling a secret. “How would you like to talk to him again?”

“Oh, gosh,” Mrs. Worthington says blithely. “I’d give anything to talk to him again.”

Bela smiles with all her teeth. “Anything?”

Mrs. Worthington doesn’t believe in séances until the first session is over, until she’s weeping in her armchair as Bela packs up the supplies. “It was him!” the old woman keeps chanting, over and over as she rocks. “It was him, it was him, it was him.”

It was him. Robert Worthington lingers in the house like a bad smell, his soul festering in death. He’ll kill his beloved Marie if he doesn’t move on soon, but on the plus side, Marie Worthington is about six months from death either way. This seems like a problem that will sort itself out. (Though Bela does plan to point whatever hunter she sees next in this general area. She’s not a monster.)

Mrs. Worthington clutches at Bela’s arms when she comes near. “My dear! My dear! How can you do this? How is this possible?”

Bela lays her hands over Mrs. Worthington’s. “Your husband’s love is so strong that not even death could take him from your side,” she says. The old woman’s eyes well up with tears. “But it’s not strong enough to keep him here for long.”

“But he must! I can’t lose him again.”

Bela shakes her head. “It goes against the natural order. If you had an amulet of Hades, then _maybe_ that would be enough to anchor him here. But those are so rare. Really, you’re lucky that you got this chance to say goodbye again.” Bela makes as if she’s about to pull away. Mrs. Worthington holds her fast.

“This amulet,” she says desperately. “Where can I get one? I have money! I can pay whatever it takes!”

“Well... No.” Bela shakes her head. “It would be too dangerous. I know of one, but it belongs to a fearsome creature. I would have to risk my life to get it.” Well, someone would have to risk their life. The world’s full of hunters eager to kill and be killed. Why should Bela deny them that pleasure?

Mrs. Worthington’s eyes are resolute and clear. “Please,” she says. “I can pay you whatever it takes to get the job done.”

The old woman’s very trusting, Bela thinks to herself as she skips out of the house, an advanced check for half a million dollars tucked into her pocket. A stranger from out of the blue offers you exactly what you want? Bela would never fall for it.

She laughs bitterly to herself and gets to work.

A week later, she’s nearly killed by a Wendigo.

Two weeks later, she cashes a second check.

Three weeks later, she gets a phone call from a bank owner with a vengeful ghost on his hands. Mrs. Worthington recommended Bela to him. Bela, of course, is to help him however she can.

She picks _Talbot_ out of the phonebook and buys herself a new flat. On paper, Bela Coulton dies a quiet death. She doesn’t hang on to useless things. And she likes her new name. She pities the boring, small people of the world, walking around with names forced on them. She pities them, when she thinks about them at all.

***

She is twenty, and she is halfway to death and what comes beyond, and what comes beyond she has no interest in seeing. She passes the anniversary of her deal sitting on her couch in the center of her flat. The couch cost half a million dollars. The flat cost more than her parents’ mansion. She listens to the clock tick, the sound echoing through her perfect flat, and watches midnight tip her into the decline. Her hands shake as she drinks her scotch. Her eyes burn.

This isn't her fault, she thinks, and not for the first time nor the last. This isn't her fault. She didn't summon the demon. She didn't even suggest the deal. The demon did that all on its own, and Bela just went along with it. Bela didn't know what she was offering. She was fourteen. She was stupid. She was scared. She didn't know.

These are the lies she tells herself that make life bearable, make the burden bearable. She knows, and the demon knows too, that she knew exactly what was at stake that day. That's how the bargain works. That is the deal. Ignorance is no excuse because ignorance renders the goods inadmissible. You can't promise away your soul without your consent and knowledge. Bela consented. Bela had knowledge. But she tells herself again and again how this isn't her fault and she drinks and she steals and she lies and cheats and robs and hurts and burns and takes what's hers and that is how she makes it from day to day, that is how she paves her road to hell. Redemption, she reasons, is a lost cause for her, and she has no intention of being the only righteous woman in hell.

She’ll earn every ounce of pain she’ll reap.

***

She is twenty-two, and she has killed her first man. The first without a middle man, she means, the first where she smells the blood as it splatters up and feels its warmth on her skin. The gun is hot in her hand as she tucks it into her purse. There is a neat little hole through his badge, through his heart. He doesn’t deserve this. She’s not sorry. That night the hellhounds bay in her ears.

There’s nothing more to say.

***

She is twenty-three when she buries her picture at the crossroads. When she stands, she wipes away her tears with dusty hands. Her face feels muddy afterwards.

“You again,” a voice behind Bela says.  Bela whirls around, her hand going for her gun out of habit. The demon smiles indulgently at her. She’s older—the vessel’s older, Bela means. The demon inside too, she supposes, but nine years means less to it than Bela. But she’s a woman now, in a tight black dress and a loose walk. “It’s been a while,” she says as she walks towards Bela, her hips swinging like a pendulum.

Bela’s mouth is dry. She balls her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “I want to renegotiate my deal,” she says in a voice that quivers no matter how she tries to calm it. She sounds like a fourteen year old again and hates herself for it.

The demon smirks at her. “Oh, Abby. You know that’s impossible.”

The name stings. Bela doesn’t show it. “It’s not. Contracts can be altered. I heard of a hunter just last month who forced a crossroads demon to renege.”

“That was an exception.”

“Then you can give me an exception.”

She chuckles, low and dark. “Deanie had something to offer. Or rather, something to threaten. You?” She raises one eyebrow and spreads her hands. “What is your bargaining chip?”

“I’m not asking for something for nothing,” Bela says. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to earn back my soul.”

The demon cocks her head, and for a moment it is obvious that this creature was not born in this body. She moves like she practiced her movement. “Anything?” she asks with a smile on her stolen lips.

“Anything.”

The demon takes another step closer and then another until they are almost chest to chest, until the demon looks up at Bela through her lashes, until Bela swears the demon can feel Bela’s heart pounding. She’s a woman now, fully grown. The thought won’t leave Bela alone. “Tough,” the demon says. “We don’t want anything from you.”

The ball of terror always curled in Bela’s stomach flails and screams. “So I’ll die,” Bela says.

The demon shrugs lightly. “Everybody does. But look at you,” she says the way that Bela talks to her cat when it does something particularly cute. “Most people when they sell their souls, they reform and repent. They spend the next ten years donating money and picking up hitchhikers and making sure they recycle. A decade spent collecting good deeds in the hope that it would save them from the pit. But look. At. You.” The demon grasps the lapels of Bela’s jacket and pulls. Bela bends. She cannot help herself. She bends until the demon can press her mouth against Bela’s ear. “You didn’t even try to be a good girl, did you, Abby?”

Bela’s mouth is dry. “My name’s not Abby anymore.”

“Your name will always be Abby.” The words drip like poison. Bela jerks away, but the demon holds her tight. “You can change your home, change your name, change your life, but you can never change your past. And you can never escape it. And in eleven months, two weeks, and twenty-three hours, I’ll send my dogs to collect what’s mine.”

This time when Bela pushes herself back, the demon lets her go. She trips and sprawls on the dusty road, staring up at the woman in black smiling down at her like Bela is the funniest joke she’s heard all day. Her eyes are red as hellfire. “I’ll be seeing you, Abby.”

“Please!” Bela’s choking on the dust, her eyes are streaming from it, and she stretches out her hand like this creature will help her up. It helped her up once, didn’t it? It helped her when no one else would. “I’ll do anything! I’ll do anything!” 

“You will, won’t you?” And one of those red, red eyes winks. “That’s what is going to make you such a great demon.”

And then she’s gone, it’s gone, and Bela lies alone in the center of the road, and the weight of her remaining time will crush her to death.

***

She thinks sometimes of a different story. Of a different life. One where her parents loved her the way that parents should love. One where she simply endured. One where Molly shut the door in her face. One where the demon laughed and told her to come back when she was a little older. It doesn’t matter the reason the deal never happens. To Bela, there are only two lives she ever could have lived: one where she said yes, one where she said no.

The world of no is Abby's world, where she makes it through school despite hating every minute. Where she still runs to America because her parents' shadows haven't touched there. Where she studies something useful like law or business or whatever it is that boring people major in so that they can get respectable jobs that society rewards without respecting. Where she has never owned a gun and doesn't know one safe from another and has never thought of salt as anything but a condiment.

Abby is such a nice, clean, well-put together woman. She marries a good man and has two children and serves on the PTA after work. She goes to neighborhood luncheons. She woos upper management. She looks the other way when her husband fucks younger women. She calls her kids on the weekend to ask their voicemail why they don’t visit. She ages. She wrinkles. She grays. She dies ugly and useless.

There's more than one type of damnation. At least Bela chose hers. That’s more than her parents got. That thought warms her more surely than flames licking at her feet.

There’s more than one type of damnation. At least Bela earned hers.  

***

She is twenty-four, and this is it.

She is twenty-four, and she is about to die.

She is twenty-four, and she does not plan on going quietly.

She is twenty-four, and she does not plan on going at all.

The demon comes unsummoned. Bela wakes to the weight of another body in the bed, and before she can yank out the knife she keeps under the mattress, an arm snakes around Bela’s waist and holds her fast. “You said you’d do anything,” the demon whispers in her ear. "Bring us the Colt and we can renegotiate.” And then the bed is empty, and the knife in buried in the mattress, and Bela spends the next hour shaking in her own cold sweat.

Bring the Colt. She shouldn’t. Bela isn’t stupid, she has never been stupid, and she knows that she shouldn’t do this. She will. There is never a doubt in her mind. The Winchesters saved her life, yes, and the Winchesters have saved other people, yes, and Bela cannot look you in the eye and say that she deserves to live more than they do, but. But. Bela looks after Bela. No one else ever will.

Stealing from the Winchesters is as easy as stealing from the proverbial baby. If this is the crack team that's supposed to save the world, she thinks as she slips the Colt into her purse, then the world will end in fire. It's a thought that makes her hand pause as she clasps her bag. She is taking one of the best weapons the boys have from them, and the boys need it desperately. Anyone with their ear to the ground knows what Lilith is planning. Is she saving her life to damn the world? Is she only getting two or three more years? Is that worth it?

Yes.

She clasps her bag and walks out the door. Any bill you don't pay today is a good bill.

When she hands over the gun, the bill changes.

She doesn’t know this man who comes to the crossroads, but his eyes flash at her, and she knows what he is. “Let’s call this a visit from upper management,” he says as he holds out his hands. “Aren’t you important.”

She holds out the gun. "The Colt for my soul," she reminds him. "That’s the deal. I give you the Colt and you tear up my contract."

The demon plucks the Colt from her hand and tucks into his suit. He smiles. Bela’s known men who smiled at her like that. She wishes shot him. "The deal was you give us the Colt, and we’d be open to renegotiation.” He spreads his arms wide. “Let’s renegotiate.”

Bela’s not surprised. That’s the worst part. She didn’t even hope. She says nothing. She’s so tired.

 The demon smiles again because this is such fun for him, because she is just another stupid little girl who didn't think about the end of that wonderful decade, because she is already nothing to him and nothing she does will change that. "What are you prepared to do to stay alive, Abby?"

She’s so tired. The answer is always the same. "Anything."

Kill the Winchesters. Kill the Winchesters and walk free.

Okay. She can kill the Winchesters.

There’s nothing to debate. She will die or they will. That’s no debate. That’s never a debate.

She shoots the beds, and the air is full of feathers when she pulls back the sheets. Like angels, she thinks nonsensically. Her phone rings. Dean taunts. He’ll die too, when the time comes. She wants to make him stay on the line. She wants to make him listen. But he can’t hear them. He can only hear her, and she might cry for him, but she’ll be damned—ha, see, she can still joke, isn’t she so strong—if he’ll hear her scream.

She’s had a good life, hasn’t she? She’s done more in ten years than most people do in their lifetime, right? She’s been on every continent, she’s worn the finest clothes, she’s downed the finest drinks and gorged herself on the finest food, she’s indulged at least six of the seven sins on a day-to-day basis. The hellhounds will rip her limb from limb in a preview of the eternity to come. It’s been a good life, hasn’t it? Hasn’t she lived the best that she could live? Hasn’t she gotten exactly what she always deserved?

She regrets nothing.

Listen. They’re coming.

She regrets nothing.

Listen. They are here.

She regrets nothing. She regrets nothing. She regrets—

Nothing.

***

She is old beyond years, beyond age, beyond measure, the lifespan of her soul stretching further than her body did on the rack. She is old, ancient and creaking, but she walks and talks like a real girl. Though the flesh is weak, her spirit is willing, and flesh is easy enough to replace.

An itching in the back of this skull. It’s midnight somewhere, and someone’s desperate. Savannah, Georgia. Andrew Milligan. She knows everything she needs to know about him before he straightens up from the secret he’s just buried at the crossroads. He freezes when he sees her. It’s the eyes—the color of the spaces between the stars.

He wants money, lots of money, so much money that he will never be without, and she reminds him that _never_ means _ten years_. And he agrees. They always do.  They fall into hell with their eyes open. His soul will be no boon, petty and small as it is, but she will have it, and he will not, and that’s victory enough. That’s what she thinks as they seal the deal, his lips pressed against the one’s she wears—this is victory enough. Life killed her, and hell claimed her, and here she is still, a survivor to the last. Listen—a heart beats in the chest she wears. Listen—ragged breath fills the lungs she carries. _As though to breathe were life!_ Ulysses said. Listen—she lives. She, in a manner of speaking, lives.

Isn't it nice to get everything you wanted?


End file.
